


Ends of the Earth

by vashiane



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gang World, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Spiderman Fusion, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Gangs, Gangs Violence, Government Experimentation, Human Experimentation, M/M, Minor Hitch Dreyse/Marlo Sand, Minor Krista Lenz | Historia Reiss/Ymir
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-25
Updated: 2015-02-08
Packaged: 2018-03-08 23:07:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3226889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vashiane/pseuds/vashiane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I was not expecting this.</p><p>Granted, I should have known. Of course taking a dead girl's superhero identity has strings attached to it. Unfinished missions, un-dealt with enemies, unsolved mysteries, things like that. I knew when I took that mask I'd have the biggest gang in the state hot after my tail wanting vengeance, but I wasn't expecting to unearth a secret conspiracy or for Jean to become - with no exaggerations - everything to me.<br/>There's a lot of things I didn't prepare for.</p><p>I guess I should apologize for that too.</p><p>[aka that AU in which Connie is Spiderman]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. To You, A Thousand Apologies

**Author's Note:**

  * For [robotsharks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/robotsharks/gifts).



> If you're thinking, "Wait a minute, I've seen this before!", it's because you have.  
> Long story short I rewrote it and I feel like I can tackle this just the way I want to.
> 
> /finger guns
> 
> Fingers crossed!

It’s been hours.

I think.

The blood running down my face has long since dried. The gash across my temple isn’t leaking anymore. It got all in my eyes, my mouth. But it’s dried now. Whatever light came in from outside is a dull, washed-out orange now. So it’s probably... sunset. Around 7. If I could remember glancing at a clock beforehand, I could figure out how much time has passed but things have long since blurred. The only memories from today that make sense are all about this room.

This really... cold... room.

Granted, it’s my fault it’s cold. This is an old brick building with old brick foundations, and I’m the one who set off a stick of dynamite two floors below. The mortar’s crumbled. Bricks have shifted, some have broken down to dust. There’s a lot of them now, a lot of little spaces for cold to creep through and every part of me that isn’t numb from the restraints already is on its way there. 

And I’ve already tried getting out of these things. The restraits. They’re thick leather belts, five of them, tightened until they dig into my skin. Even through the suit. It was painful at first, but slowly my nerves fried themselves out. I couldn’t have moved a pinky if I wanted to now. _Trust_ me, I want to.

All I can do is sit here. Admire the sunlight, or what's left of it. And wait.

I don’t know what I’m waiting for. A miracle? Fat chance that’s going to happen. Or a savior? Some kind of knight in shining armor? That’s not happening. I don’t even know where everyone is, if they’re still alive or if there’s okay. I’ve been in this room with its crumbling walls for hours.

I think.

This quiet’s starting to drive me mad, though. It’s been... a while... with just my thoughts and the whistle of air through those cracks in the walls. If anyone is here I haven’t heard a sound from them - and trust me, it’s so damn quiet I can hear my joints pop when I try to move. Surprised I’m not used to it already actually. The quiet. I’ve been eased into it. Like adjusting to the temperature of a pool you’ve been thrown in. It’s cold at first. Your lungs are screaming. Everything is dark and there’s no sound, light, or sense. But after a while you remember which was up and the water becomes lukewarm. You become adjusted, even if your teeth are chattering and your ears are still ringing and you’re sinking instead of rising. It becomes your new normal over time.

There’s a thud from somewhere above, a hard one. It’s enough to stir up some dust from the ceiling and rain it down. Throwing little pebbles bouncing off my face and one scratching a line down my nose. That pebble doesn’t even hit the ground before the cut it’s left has filled with blood and started to overrun. It trickles down at a snail’s pace just like all the streams of blood before it.

The thud sounds again. This time there’s a scream that follows it, and words I can’t make out being yelled. There’s a bang, something metallic hitting something else metallic and the yelling is muffled for a few moments, then snuffed out entirely. A quiet passes over, the kind where that's just confusing and leaves you not understanding what just happened.

Until you do.

Until I do, and a pit forms in my gut because the scream from above sounds like Sasha’s. It’s been quiet for so long, just the sound of the wind and my own breathing.There hasn’t been a sign of anyone - Sasha, or Annie, or Mikasa, or Jean - and suddenly after all this time there’s a sign. A sign that she’s still alive even if... even if she hasn’t said a thing after that, oh, God. That kicks my mind into overdrive, a whirl of _“Sasha’s gone quiet, Sasha’s gone quiet, Connie, Sasha’s gone quiet -”_ and I writhe against the restraints against despite how much it hurts.

The pain stops me in my tracks a lot faster than I expected it to. I’m slumped back on the wooden slab in barely any time at all, wheezing her name through the gag with a throat rubbed raw from... whatever happened earlier.

Sasha… God, there go my thoughts, on a spiral again into thoughts I don’t want to think about. My mind slowly going just as numb as my arms as every scenario imaginable flashes through it. The good, the bad, the ugly - it swings back and forth between the three and the emotions are sharp enough to make my eyes sting. It burns. Holding them back burns and somehow my retinas haven’t fried from all the salt water retention.

I’m about to let go, drop my head against my chest and just fucking bawl when I hear a screech. Metal against flooring now. The doorknob clicks, turns, and there’s a chair thrown into the room with a loud, head-ringing clang. It’s one of those cheap auditorium folding chairs with peeling beige paint and a leg that I can tell is wobbly before it’s even been opened. It’s shorter than the others. The chair finally stops rattling and in its place, heels - heels from glossy black shoes - snap along the floor like little gunshots. She’s slipped through the door, closing it with a sharp shove before she walks, towards me. I almost don’t recognize her at first. But I do, eventually. And I wish I didn’t.

She swings her hips when she walks and there’s a laugh bubbling up as she kicks aside the chair and folds her arms. She takes a good hard look at me. Lets her eyes rake over me completely. They stop at my face, the laugh spills out and she holds her arms open like I’m supposed to rush into them and hug her. I couldn’t. Wouldn’t if I could.

“Sorry about the wait,” she says when she bends down to pick up the chair. “Busy. A little bit of that, a little bit of this.” It’s unfolded and set down in seconds. She flings herself into it with a quiet sigh and a chuckle, fingers rapping against the back while she tells me, “I’ve got projects to finish.”

I hate the look she gives me. I hate the look she gives me over the tops of her nails while she smirks and throws one leg slowly over the other. I hate the the look she gives me when she adjusts her too-big hoodie over her dress and practically nestles into the fabric. It makes my skin crawl.

I don’t say a word. Just hang my head and stare down.

She scoffs a bit, digging into the pocket of her jacket for something to fiddle with. She finds something and fumbles it in her hands with little grumbles, but what catches my attention is the hole. The hole in the pocket that her finger slips through with a quiet swear and she has to wrench herself free from it.

It’s the same stupid hole that bothers Jean constantly when he sticks his hands in the pocket, with the same stupid faded yellow sleeves and the stupid blue body, streaked with dried brown blood and torn at the sleeves. On her. That’s Jean’s hoodie and she’s snuggling herself in it like it’s hers.

The words are turning into bile on my tongue but I manage to choke out my question. “Where’s Jean?” She peers up from her fingers, a little pout on her lips as she taps the file against them. They quirk up. She’s smiling. And she chuckles, goes right back to her nails, and doesn’t answer.

God I feel sick. My lungs clench up and black spots burst across my vision, my breath locks in my throat and I try, vainly, to pretend that this is a world where nothing horrible happens to Jean Kirschtein and nothing ever will.

There’s no point in pretending anymore though. Is there?

“Why?” she quips. “Got any last words for him?”

Oh God.  
No?

Other than pleas that this isn’t real. That he's fine.

Hoping that if I did have any last words he was still alive to hear them.

It’s then it hits me, just how badly I have fucked up. In every way imaginable. Walked my dearest friends into traps and watched them pay for my mistakes and I’m surprised any of them are still alive, not just the little handful I’ve got left. The signs on this road tell of a dead end but I’m going to crash this train wreck by myself. I am not taking Jean with me.

I am not going to hurt him again. Or any of them. But can I? Fix this, I mean. Is it fixable?

“Oh..." I say. "Nice try.” If I bluff enough I can pretend this doesn’t hurt, so I bark out a laugh and do just that. Pretend. “Gonna psyche me into thinking you killed him or something? That’ll make me desperate. Willing to submit to whatever you’ve got in store for me.” She tilts her head to the side like she’s confused before she uncrosses her legs, leans on her knees and stares up at me through dark dyed hair. She’s silent for a moment. She just stares. Until a smirk blooms across her lips and a giggle bursts out.

“Is that what you think?” she asks, raking her fingers through her hair. “Connie. C’mon. We’re all friends here, right?”

“Hell no.” I’m tied up to a splintering board with leather belts and my best friends are somewhere with only God knows what happening to them and she’s behind all of it, everything, and she has the audacity to say _we’re all friends here._

We’re all friends here, my ass.

“No?” A hand goes to her heart like she’s offended. “Oh, Connie, really? But I thought -” I cut her off with a wheezing laugh and words that sound more like a snarl.

“Hell no. Just shut the fuck up.” She takes a step back, rolls her shoulders and drops her head down until half of her face is curtained by her hair. Her hands dig into the pockets of the hoodie - _his_ hoodie, the one that doesn’t match her sleek black dress and sheer brown tights, and what I can catch of her face she looks almost… hurt.

It’s gone within seconds though. When she lifts her head again whatever she had in her eyes is gone. Almost like I’d imagined it.

“Alright then,” she whispers. “Alright then.”

She straightens out the sleeves, clears her throat, and sighs.

“So. About those last words of yours.”

“Well, they’re not for you,” I lied. I did have some for her, for the person I thought I knew then who I obviously don’t know now. She responds to that with a shrug. Her expression’s flat while she glances around the room, because there’s nothing to look at. She finds something though. Her eyes land on something behind me and her entire face lights up.

“I’ve got time,” she says slowly.

“I’ve got time,” she says, and slides on her heels until she’s right in front of me. Her fingers reach out and hook themselves in the spaces between my chest and the belt wrapped around it. “To play messenger. Pass along your last words to those alive to hear. Swing by the graves of the ones that aren’t. I know there’s gotta be some, right?”

I don’t say it, but I want to.

I’m _itching_ to.

“It took you a while to get here. I bet you’ve got a story to tell.” The smile on her lips grows into a pretty, blinding grin and I’m reminded of the girl I knew. Perfect smile, perfect hair, perfect clothes. The kind of girl people put on a pedestal. That pedestal of hers has always been cracked though.

Now it seems she’s cracked along with it.

“Don’t you want to speak now?” she says as she unties the cloth from around my head, pulls it from my mouth. Spins it, like a windmill through her fingers. “Vent your frustrations?” She takes a step closer, until we’re eye to eye. “Curse my name?” Her grin turns malicious and all that dark intent that was buried deep in her head is spilling out. Her tongue darts out between her smile and runs itself across her teeth. She leans into me and whispers, “Or do you want to sing his?”

She rocks back and forth on her heels. Grinning, and around that tongue she says his name. “Jean. Jean. Jeeean. It’s such a pretty name.”

I’ve got to bite down on my lip now to keep quiet, I’ve got to stay _quiet_. It’s a game.

“Jean, Jean, Jean. Jean. Kirschtein. K-I-R-S-C-H-T-E-I-N. Need to know how to spell it for his tombstone.”

Something in my brain shorts out. 

I stare at her long and hard. Wait for a little twitch or a tick or something. But all she does is beam and rock, rock and beam, until she raises an eyebrow, with a sympathetic wince, and says, “It’s gonna be a closed casket affair though.”

I lose then, throw in my hand and surrender.

“What the fuck -” The restraints keep me from grabbing her by the neck and shaking the life out of her, slam me back against the slab I’m tied to when I throw myself against them. “-did you do to him?” A smile that pretty shouldn’t be used to tell someone this. But she keeps on, smiling like she’s been given everything she’s ever wanted.

“How about a exchange?” She retreats towards her chair again, slinging a foot up on the seat. “You talk, I’ll give you your most precious thing back.” Brain all in a panic or not, there’s something off here and it finally sinks in.

She’s asked, over and over, for me to talk.

“Why... why do you want me to tell you about how I got here? Of all the things you could ask me, and it’s that?

“Because I want you to start from the beginning,” she says.

“Your story has the answers to every question I’ve got, Connie. Whether I asked them or not.” Her leg swings out and she drops into the chair, folds that leg over the other one, tips herself back on the chair’s two back legs. “We’ve both got the time and I’ve got the curiosity. If you’ve got any last words - to me, to him, I’ll be your cassette tape. I’ll be sure to play them back for him.” She tips her head and her hair drops onto her shoulder.

I twist my fingers around the belt and keep my voice low, but not low enough to where she can’t hear. “Sure,” I say. “Let’s start with Christa.”

That smile drops the moment I say Christa’s name. Almost like a robot, she lifts her neck again, drops her head down a notch and stares me down.

It’s my turn to grin like a madman.

“Something wrong, babe?”

She pulls herself up and rolls her shoulders back, but whatever amusement she got from all this is gone. Christa’s name sucked all the joy out of her, as it fucking should. It was proof, for me and maybe someone else too, that she wasn’t completely gone.

“Fine,” she says coolly. “I did say the beginning and she’s kind of the beginning.” I’m enjoying her sneer of disgust a little too much. Her fingers tap out a rough rhythm on her knee and her glare’s so cold it makes the wind chill feel warm. She’s agitated now that I brought up something that she begged me to hear, irritated by old wounds she inflicted and old memories she thought could be buried.

Okay. Maybe I have more control over this situation than I thought. Maybe?

But if she wants me to stand her and tell her my life story, spill my secrets and woes and apologize for all of my mistakes, I will.

If it saves him, I will.


	2. Christa Lenz

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first person I need to apologize to is, like I said, Christa. 
> 
> And like a good chunk of these apologies, it started with blood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we go into the full-out swing of things~
> 
> I have a [tumblr](http://www.vashiane.tumblr.com) and a [twitter](https://twitter.com/vashiane) if you wanna chat!

The first person I need to apologize to is, like I said, Christa.

And like a good chunk of these apologies, it started with blood.

Everywhere.

Oh my God, it was everywhere.

On my hands. Slithered down my wrists. Soaked up into the fabric of my sweatshirt. Dripping down my arms. Pooling in the crooks of my elbows. Staining everything it touches red.

I had sat in that booth for a good ten minutes, silent, with my fists curled up and leaking. Head pressed against bruised knuckles. Numb. Trying to function while the visions of lightning flashes and pools of dark liquid mess with the things right in front of me. I remember bringing my hand down on the diner table and expecting to touch gravel and dust. I remember trying to grab the glass in front of me and thinking it was her wrist instead. My fingers slip up once, hit the table edge with a bang and the gasp of pain that comes out of my mouth I remember thinking it was hers.

The cashier’s already dropped her post once to ask if I was okay. All I could choke out was that my friend was dead.

_Dead_. She’s fucking _dead_.

The bile builds up in my throat again and I have to jam my hand against my mouth and focus on my breathing. Again. In and out. In and out. My other hand presses a finger on the table top and draws out shapes - some have five sides, some have three, and I’m trying to make a square. I’m trying to. I keep making triangles when I’m trying to make squares. I’m trying so fucking hard and _I keep making triangles when I’m trying to make squares._

Slow down, I tell myself. I slam my hand down onto the table, start over again. Try it again. Jab a finger at the tabletop and draws out a circle to stop it from shaking so. Just like Armin showed you. Start with a line.

Draw the first line, inhale for as long as your finger’s moving. Stop. Hold. Count to 1. 2. Draw the second line. Exhale slowly, for as long as your finger’s moving. Stop. Repeat. Stop. Repeat.

I draw out 8 full squares before I no longer feel like I’m drowning.

My head hits the table when I stop. I’m exhausted. A stray thought passes (more like a command, telling me to get a hold of a distraction) and I wipe my hands on my sleeve before my hand lowers to grab my phone.

And it rings.

Despite the angry jolt of shock snaking up my spine my hands don’t shake as badly as they did earlier. It worked, I guess? I’m able to grab it, pay enough attention to the name to register it, and slide my finger across the screen to take it.

“Mm.”

“ _Connie?_ ” Marco always sounds so soft over the phone. It’s almost hard to hear him sometimes. And tonight, with every sound dancing in a cloud of static, Marco Bodt’s practically gone. There, but not. “ _Hey. Um, quick question._ ” He pauses for a while, like he’s waiting for me to say something and it clicks finally that I’m not going to. “ _You heard from Hitch yet?_ ”

I shake my head. Then I remember I have to speak, and I wonder if my lungs even work properly anymore. They ache.

“ _Nn-uh._ ” The ‘no’ gets twisted up in my throat and only half of the word gets out, because I’m reminded that Hitch is supposed to be here with me, and she’s not. We were both supposed to be here thirty minutes ago, and I know I’m late, but there’s fashionably late and then there’s fucking this.

Marco’s sigh is shaky. “ _Jean’s freaking,_ ” he says. “ _Says Hitch’s last texts to him were really cryptic and he thinks... just... hang on._ ”

Cryptic? How?

Hitch isn’t the type to leave vague messages. Hers are blatant. Hers are harsh. Hers are framed with winky faces and heart emoticons and dripping with sarcasm. Cryptic text messages are better suited for Armin, who likes to text people he’s outside their house and then stand out of the door’s typical line of sight. Cryptic is not her thing.

But Marco sends me a text message, forwarding hers over, and I realize I might be wrong about that Hitch-not-doing-cryptic thing. Really wrong.

**i’m not making it there 2nite sry**  
 **tell con not 2 wait up**  
 **i’m not gonna b around for a while**  
 **have fun tho ;)**

  
Marco rejoins me soon after I’ve pulled my head back up with a whispered, “ _Did you get it?_ ” I nod, forgetting again that he’s not here with me and I have to summon the will to speak again.

“Mm-hm.”

Real good summoning work there, Connie.

“ _I’m not going to be around for a while..._ ” Marco’s voice is so low now I have to strain and guess what he’s saying. “ _And Jean can’t contact Marlo either. Marlo’s the one I’m worried about but if something’s wrong then I -_ ”

He stops to speak to Jean about something - I’m assuming it’s Jean, anyway - and I trace out squares, boxes, on the table until he comes back with a mutter of, “ _Marlo’s phone is dead. Straight to voice mail now._ ”

Straight to voice mail. Marlo Sand with a dead phone is practically unheard of. Literally unheard of.

Just draw your circles and breathe Connie.

“ _Just - Jean’s been trying to contact them and Sasha’s been trying to contact them and we haven’t heard anything. That was about thirty minutes ago and..._ ” Marco sighs again. This has to be eating at him. Has to. Marco and Marlo are two extremely different peas stuck in the same pod and one without the other makes the world feel empty. Off.

And it eats at me too, but there’s already a gaping hole in my gut from earlier and my brain’s been wired on this one occupied line. I’m strung out and I’m fucking tired, and I can only handle so many fucked-up occurrences in one day. I drop my head on the table again, hard enough to make a sound that reminds me of breaking bones.

This is _fucking_ insane.

Something buzzes against my ear then. Static bursts across my vision and there’s a thud, something hitting the table. My heart’s thudding in my chest like I’ve run a marathon. Thumping so hard it hurts. It takes five blinks and a half-assed attempt at a deep breath - in. hold. out. - for things to clear up and when I look down at the table I see my phone. Buzzing. Screen flashing someone’s name.

The name on my screen is Hitch. It’s... Hitch. It’s fucking -

She’s calling me.

It’s faster to hit the speaker button and frantically whisper at Marco to _hang up, she’s calling, I’ll call you back_ , hit the call button and pull in a breath so I don’t feel like I’m dying. Faster to fumble with twitching fingers and slam the phone up to my ear and _trace my fucking squares_ then wonder about what the explanation is for an absence like that and words like ‘I’m not gonna be around for a while’.

But if I think I’m going to get an explanation out of Hitch - which I did - I’m proved wrong. All she gives me is an oddly upbeat “ _On my way~_ ” and it goes dead. There’s a click, then the low drone of a dropped line. Just as swiftly as the relief washed over me it’s receded again.

I have to think about moving. I have to tell myself to swing one leg out of the booth, and then the other. I have to use my elbows to hold me up while I try to stand. I have to remember how to move my arm so I can put my phone back in my pocket. And the few fragile steps I manage to take are stopped the moment I look out the window.

There she is.

And there she... goes? The hell? She was supposed to meet me _here_.

Fuck it, I decided. I yank a crumpled-up bill out of my pocket and throw it down on the table. I don’t even bother unfolding it, so I’m not sure whether it’s the ten, the five, or the twenty - hope it’s not the twenty, but I don’t care enough right now to check. Shuffle around the waitress serving beers to the table across from mine and the group of teenagers getting ready to leave. My hands hit the bar to the front door and I shove myself out into the night and shiver.

It’s June, by the way. Early June. The air smells heavy and it threatens to burst with every low rumble of thunder from the sky. It’s the southern part of Jinae, a city nestled the lowest part of the state, and on a night like this you’d expect your blood to boil. It’s supposed to be hot, humid, steaming - but it’s a summer night in Jinae and the temperature’s dipping into the fifties.

There is so much _wrong_ with tonight. There is so much _wrong_.

Ratty sneakers skid against the slick sidewalks and then it hits me, slams into me like a battering ram and all the walls I’ve slowly patched together burst into rubble-sized pieces.

I can’t abandon the car.

The car is parked just outside Downward Dog’s, Jean’s vintage station wagon with the sunroof and the dark wooden paneling, painted with three different shades of black over the years. The car isn’t attracting anyone’s attention at the moment but that’s now. At the moment. It could catch someone’s eye, the moment I’m not someone could break into the car and -

No.

No.

No.  
  
I can’t.

I can’t abandon the -

I can’t.

It’s too late to turn back, shuffle inside and call her, because the second the plan forms is the second Hitch’s steps grind to a halt. Of course. She turns around but doesn’t stop walking, instead commanding me forward with rolls of her hand, and I grind my heel into the sidewalk and sprint towards her. It doesn’t take much to weave through the crowd forming outside a stall selling some kind of spices, something about warding off your inner demons. It’s the kind of tourist trap Jean would initially scoff at and walk away from, only to turn around and buy half the stall’s inventory. ‘Just in case’, he says, like how he’ll spend ten minutes in the rain struggling to close his umbrella but won’t come in the foyer to close it, or he’ll deliberately stick to the other side of the sidewalk when he sees a ladder. Jean always tells me life’s stupidly unpredictable, snatching up anyone it wishes to play with and having its way with them, and he wants to have some kind of edge when he’s eventually taken up.

I catch up to Hitch with a skid of sneakers with my eyes locked on my hands and think maybe Jean’s not that crazy for wanting some kind of security.

She’s walking like she’s got a place to go, head held high and eyes forward. Her hair doesn’t have that usual shine to it, it’s dark in some places and I’m not sure if that’s just my eyes or the light or whatever else it could be. And every couple of steps she wavers. Just a little. Sways a little too far in one direction and rights herself again with squared shoulders or an angry sigh. Hitch is quiet, and it’s _disturbing_.

“Hitch?” Just say something to me, this silence is fucking unbearable today. I just want her to take the bait and maybe I don’t have to say anything more. Maybe she’ll fill the silence. Between the humidity and the spice stalls, the gasoline and something not exactly metallic, the smells are making my stomach turn and I don’t want to talk. She doesn’t say anything though. Not then or now, when she reaches the door of the tiny pastry shop, just grabs me by the collar of my sweatshirt over the step and into the building. My foot catches and I stumble, throwing my arms out to grab the doorway, breath catching in my throat and thoughts that _shit, I’m going to bust my head open on fucking tile tonight_ swirling so fast I’m dizzied.

Hitch just gives me a look. I don’t know if it’s sympathetic or pitying or disgusted - I can’t read blurs after all - but I can feel her stare. If she wants to say something, she doesn’t. She just drops her hold on me and makes her way up to the counter while I wait for my eyes to uncross and the bile to recede and maybe, maybe, I’ll be okay.

The scream from the counter girl helps speed up that process. The coming back to my sense process, not the process of me being okay.

(That’s going to take so much longer.)

Alright, I think to myself. She’s probably seen me. I’m covered in blood, got it splattered all across my stomach and on my arms and I’m sure it’s on my jeans. I probably look like I’ve had the color leeched from my skin. Like a corpse. I’ve stumbled in here about as functional as a damn zombie.

But when I actually look up, she’s not looking at me. I didn’t make her scream.

Hitch did.

And I’m about to ask why, but Hitch spins around delicately on those little red heels of hers and I understand everything, a numbing kind of cold slipping down my spine when I see her.

She’s as blood-soaked as I am.

And it’s not bothering her. Or if it is, she isn’t showing it. She’s kicked back, elbows against the counter, making random faces at the ceiling and paying absolutely no attention to the smear of blood on her cheek. Or the blood on her dress. The droplets splattered up her legs. She’s leaning along the counter humming along to some pop song on the radio like there’s nothing wrong.

There is _so_ \-- _much_ \-- _wrong_.

Hitch crooks a finger to pull me further in, only to stop when I step into the light. Her lips fall open, a pretty picture of shock as her eyes rake me over. But Hitch is silent. Again. Whatever she had to say is held back when she presses her lips together and taps her heel against the black-and-white tile. She’s quiet. And it’s disturbing.

This is Hitch we’re talking about, after all.

She’s never quiet.

But I can’t really confront her with it, or I could, but how? We’re in the exact same boat - both oddly quiet and splattered with blood - and she’s probably just as curious as to what happened to me. I’m almost tempted to just fold, tell her everything.

And I think about all their Instagram pictures and the way Hitch would never directly say they were close friends but still find a way to invite her to everything. How the only two people with keys to Hitch’s place are her and Marlo. How the coffee shop she works at is a good nine miles away from her apartment, but if Hitch hasn’t swung by the place at least once before it closed something wasn’t right.

I remember that Hitch is the type of person to claim she never needs friends and then clings to the ones she snares like they’re her lifelines. Cutting any one of them off her kills her slowly and... I’ve wrecked enough lives today as is.

* * *

“Thought you were supposed to be a hero, Connie.” Her voice comes out of nowhere, and I remember I’m not alone, tied up in this empty room or three months back in a pastry shop with the walls closing in.

She’s here.

Listening.

Like we’re talking about the weather.

“I... tried.” It’s not a lie, I _tried_. I spent hours curled up in my tiny bathroom, dry-sobbing over pain so intense it made my vision dark. Didn’t sleep until 6 AM going over the files Ilse gave me and trying to draw conclusion with a caffeine-drenched mind. Dodged bullets and sprained muscles and nursed concussions fighting for my life and everyone ease’s - you can’t sit here and tell me I didn’t try.

You can’t look me in the eye and make me believe I didn’t try, because goddammit, I _tried_.

I just...

Couldn’t save everyone.

“Poor little Hitch,” she mumbles. She picks off the black nail polish in little flakes, watching them flutter to the floor. “Fragile, friendless Hitch with her walls and her masquerades.” Her tone is dull, lifeless. Head tipped down to stare at her nails. “I think you just didn’t want to responsible for hurting anyone. Why else would you hide something like that?”

“I didn’t.”

Her smile is frosty when she glances up, the polish on her index finger all but gone. “And how did that work for you?”

The tears well up before I can stop them. _Shit_.

I have to shake my head repeatedly to stop them from falling, but my throat’s already choked up and my nose stings and I have the sounds of screams and breaking bones and bullets going through my head and -

There’s a little snapping sound and I’m redirected to her, a yellow strand wound around her index finger. She drops it. Then seeks out another strand in Jean’s hoodie, twists it around her finger, and pulls.

If she wanted a fast way to piss me off, congratulations, she’s found it.

“Don’t fucking do that.”

She tips her head to the side, staring up at me blankly while she drags her nails along her arm. One catches on a fraying strand and around her finger it goes, until it comes off with a pop and a flick of her wrist.

I wish I could move my arms, if only to rip that damn hoodie off of her. It’s not hers to rip the strands out of it, it’s his, and he’s the only one allowed to slouch in his chair and grumble while the tops of his fingers turn purple from the threads wrapped tightly around him. That is his right, and his hoodie, and my arms are going numb from how hard I’m pushing against these belts trying to get out.

“It’s not -- yours.” It’s his, and I’m going to give it back to him when I get out of here, I will. I commit the thought to my mind like a promise, I will, I will, I will.

The tiniest twitch of her lips is the only sign of emotion on her face when she says, “It’s not like he’s going to wear it again.”

There’s silence.

If these belts weren’t here, I would have fallen. Dropped to the ground, numb as ice, and never moved again because she keeps saying that she keeps saying that why do you keep saying that if you don’t mean it -

Through everything that’s happened, I’ve had Jean by my side. Always. As my roommate, then my friend, then something more. I fell in love with Jean like a free fall - a drop into rock bottom without a parachute or a warning. It’s terrifying, staring over at a person while they sleep and realizing you need them as much as you need oxygen. What if something happens to them, what if they’re gone? How can you breathe again?  
You wind your fingers into theirs and accept the fact that you can’t. Inhale every bit of air you can get and promise to never take it for granted.

But every fall ends. There’s a bottom, somewhere down there.

I guess this is where I hit it.

“Stop _saying_ that!” I scream. The leather buries itself into my skin the harder I push. At this rate it’s going to break it. And I’ll bleed, all over the belts and all on the dusty laminate floor, but it wouldn’t hurt. It couldn’t hurt.

I cannot think of anything more painful than the thought of a world without him.

She doesn’t say a word, just readjusts the sleeves and rolls back her shoulders. Folds her arms and straightens up in her chair, turns herself into the perfect image of control. A subtle, stabbing mockery while she threads needles through my skin and yanks.

She takes me apart, piece by piece, and she laughs.

“I’ll stop saying it when it stops being true,” she says, then waves it off like it meant nothing. Through her fingers that damned smirk forms again. She’s a picture of sinisterly poise, fingers slowly rubbing together while her ink-black hair slides over half of her face again. Like a mask. Her fingers stop once the middle one brushes against her thumb, and there’s a smirk on her face as she speaks again. “But enough about that. 

“You’ve got a story to finish, baby.”

* * *

A snapping sound jolts me out of my thoughts. It’s the counter girl, closing the lid on a Styrofoam container and sliding it over to Hitch. She’s got her eyes trained on her face while she hands it over, then immediately ducks her head and focuses Hitch hands the girl a bill over her shoulder, digs her nails into the top of the container and drags it.

The sound reminds me of the gravel under her heels, scraping while I dragged her.

Hitch nods at the door behind me, plucking her nails from the grooves they’ve made in the container and scooping it up into her arms. Around me she goes, out the door with the jingle of a bell and that brings me back to the present, where I need to be, because of the words she utters as she walks past me.

“I’m heading towards Jean’s car.”

My limbs grow cold. I can feel them giving out on me slowly, sinking me back against the counter because

The car.

She’s heading towards the car.

I draw in a breath, sketch out a shape on the counter top (square? circle? a fucking octagon?), close my eyes and focus. I need to now, because there are ten ways this can go horrifically wrong and only one way this can go right.

She’s covered by that quilt Jean’s mother bought him and he regulated to the back of his station wagon with an eye roll. It’s held her securely enough on the trip from the alley to the diner, and as long as Hitch doesn’t touch the back seat, she’ll be fine. The groceries are in the trunk, the quilt’s got her completely covered, if I have a little luck and maybe a little skill I can make sure -

“Hey.” A hand grips my shoulder from behind, fingers almost digging, but when I turn around to look it’s just the counter girl. The counter girl with a smile that wobbles the moment her eyes land on my sweatshirt, and though she tries she can’t quite keep the shake out of her voice. “You... you’re alright aren’t you?’

No.

_Hell_ no.

But I smile, nod, and say I’m fine. Push myself off the counter and say I’m fine. If you say something enough, it comes true, so they say, although I’m pretty sure you can’t beg for a person’s life back.

I’ve... tried that already.

There’s a rapping on the window and a muffled “What the hell?” from outside. I don’t have to look up to know who it is. It’s Hitch, and if I stall anymore Hitch will stream out questions like a broken faucet, and I don’t have a wrench.

It’ll be fine.

Right?

Just - pull open the front door and shiver, again, because it’s way too cold - keep the quilt still and keep her out of the back seat. Walk, Connie, you’ll be fine. Once Hitch is back at her place I can finally deal with the real problems.

The body in the car.

The key to the storage unit.

The costume.

Three problems that loom over my head as I hit the unlock button on the keypad and flinch as the locks click, as Hitch wrenches open the passenger door and slides herself inside. Three problems that spill down my shoulders like melted ice as I take the driver’s seat, grip the steering wheel until my knuckles go white like they’ve been frostbitten. Three problems that are going to hang over me like some kind of frigid ghost until I manage to screw my head on straight and figure something out.

“ _I can’t... leave them alone like this. You have to... please..._ ”

I pull the clutch back to reverse, throw my arm back over the seat and mumble out an “I know” to ears that will never hear it.

“You know what?” Hitch drums her fingers on the Styrofoam before snapping them to get my attention, pointing out a car that had slid right into the space I was about to pull into. They stop for a second, just long enough to drag a sigh out of the two of us, before skidding their way forward up to the light. It’s red now, and right behind that car comes three more, boxing me in until it turns green again.

“I don’t have time for this shit, man.” I _needed_ out. It wasn’t a want, it was a need. Being trapped in this car is making my skin burst out into goosebumps, and each time her nails hit the top of that container I’m reminded of scraping pebbles and broken shards of glass lying on broken shards of cobblestone.

I suck in a deep breath.

“City traffic, Connie.” She finally stops with her incessant drumming and pops the lid open - two sharp snaps and the car is blanketed in the smell of hot dough and cinnamon. Doughnuts. Those little fried dough balls that get dunked in cinnamon sugar twice, piled in a fifteen-count mountain and served with another dusting of sugar. They’re Marlo’s favorite guilty pleasure (and Hitch’s even though she doesn’t like to say it), but Marlo only buys them when he’s stressed to hell, and when he’s stressed to hell he doesn’t have the heart to go out and buy them for himself.

Hitch goes and buys them for him.

I clench my fingers around the wheel again, readjust my grip so I can turn, and ask her. “How’s Marlo?”

She fixes me with a blank stare, her fingers busy with the pack of chopsticks in the container. She slides them out, separates them, and only breaks her look to glance down as she skewers three of the doughnuts onto the chopstick in her left hand. Hitch leans over and threads the doughnut skewer through the gaps in my fingers before stabbing one for herself and snapping the container closed. Still left about... eleven for Marlo, but they’re not my doughnuts.

Plus, I have to drive. These things are a serious distraction.

The light finally turns and I can breathe a little sigh of relief. I’m not boxed in anymore. In the few seconds of slow readjustment to movement, I’ve got enough time to jam the skewer back between her fingers with an apology before a space clears up and I can slide the car back into traffic.

A quiet right turn later and my brain stutters out. I don’t remember if I was supposed to turn left or right here.

“Wait, shit, Hitch? Am I doing this right?” Hitch doesn’t answer for a bit, scanning the three windows for her bearing. She nods. Then looks at me funny, her eyebrows knotted up and eyes narrowed into a squint.

“Uh. Yeah? Don’t remember where my house is or something?” She flicks a finger towards her window and says, “It’s off Worthington.”

I take the two seconds I can spare without touching the steering wheel to press my fingers to my forehead and calmly remind her that everything is off Worthington. Worthington Boulevard runs up from the highway that takes you straight to the Maria River, cuts through the center of Jinae and the heart of downtown and bleeds off into I-16. _Every single road_ in Jinae, in some way, shape, or form, goes off of Worthington.

“Where off Worthington? That could be literally anywhere.” I peer around the mirror to check out the road sign - Danvers, okay - and slide through the intersection. If I know anything, I know it’s not off Danvers. “Is that downtown, is that off Jameson Park, is that by the docks, is that to the East off of Rose, where the hell is ‘off Worthington’ Hitch?”

“I don’t live by fucking Rose,” she snaps, before jabbing two fingers forward. “Once you hit the roundabout -”

“Fucking, really? I hate that roundabout -” It’s up ahead, two intersections away after this red light and I quietly steel off any incoming headache so I can focus. Jean and I have had way too much close calls on this damned roundabout.

“Take the next street for a left -”

“What street?” Does she mean the left off the roundabout itself or the one past the roundabout? Fuck. She’s clicking my mind to a halt right now. I can’t deal with vague instructions right now. That’s all I got from her, vague instructions and buzz words and fragments stuttered and -

My mind is crashing.  
It’s literally crashing.

All I can hear is scraping gravel and gasped-out pleas, little wrecked screams plaguing the words she tries to tell me, instructions on where to go and what to do and to please please please don’t leave the world alone like this -

“Connie!” A hand slams into my shoulder and I jump, so hard my knee crashes into the bottom of the steering wheel and my head bounces off the top. There’s a cacophony of horns from behind me, dragging me back up and reminding me that I’m not dead and I have to move.  
I’m in traffic still. I’m not in an alley with busted-out street lamps and fire escapes that creak at the slightest touch. I’m in traffic. And the light’s green.

I hit the gas and drive forward. Blatantly ignoring Hitch’s arm smacks and the repetitions of my name. I can’t really hear her, anyway. Everything sounds like white noise, like my head’s been shoved underwater, and I can feel the memories lapsing over me like waves. Tidal waves. Each one slams into me and recedes, drags me into deeper water, and it’s a pattern. Over and over.

Like drowning. Like -

Someone yanks my hands off the steering wheel and steers the car over into the first available space by the curb. It actually does hit the curb, send me flying back into the seat and the little knock to my head rights the world a bit. Gives me air. I can breathe again, even if it’s shallow and my fingers are shaking and if I so much as tip my head everything threatens rolls over on its side.

But I didn’t stop the car.

She snaps her fingers in front of my face, sighs, and tells me to move.

“What?” I stutter out.

“We’re switching.” She unbuckles her seat belt, leans over to undo mine, then pops the lock to the door and pushes it open. “I’m driving. You’re sitting here. Can you move?”

It takes a bit to process but I nod, fling the belt off and clamor into the other seat while she hops out and walks around to the driver’s seat. It’s a struggle, trying to juggle breathing properly and moving and not crushing the doughnuts she just kind of tossed there. But somehow, I’m in the chair, doughnuts are okay, and I’m getting enough oxygen in my lungs.

She straps in, and the first words out of her mouth are an exasperated, “What the -- fuck --is wrong with you, Springer?”

Where do you want me to begin?

Instead of blurting out the truth - _your best friend is dead, I’ve got her body in the car because I didn’t want to leave her there, and, oh, by the way, did you know she was a crime vigilante?_ \- I suck in a breath and just opt to staring at her while she glances behind us so she can pull out of the space (and off the damn curb). She eases back into traffic and breezes through the two intersections up to the roundabout with no trouble at all.

I suddenly feel like a joke.

She clears her throat quietly. Rubs a free hand across her face while she considers her words. “You. You walk into the bakery with me. And you’re fucking splattered in paint, or blood, or - is that blood?” Hitch drops a hand to splay it across one of the stains. She skates her fingers across the one on my knee, loosing tracing the outline before she moves up to the one on my stomach, then my arm. “What the hell is this?”

“What’s on you then?” I counter and she draws her hand back. It goes on the container, pops the lid open again and her fingers reach to the skewer she made earlier. She shoves it between my fingers, mumbles something under her breath and redirects her attention to the road.

She’s barely moved the car forward before she snaps her fingers in my face again and points at the doughnut skewer. “You’re turning as gray as your fucking hair, Connie, eat that before you pass out or something.”

“I’ll eat it when you answer,” I reply, almost automatically, and Hitch whips her head around so fast I’m surprised her neck didn’t snap. She’s looking at me like she can’t believe I’ve had the audacity to say such a thing, defy her in any kind of way, and flickering through her eyes are ideas on how to reply. What to do with me. It’s a look that tells you you’ve cornered her, even if it’s just for a little while.

“Well. Jokes on you,” she says coolly. She rakes her free hand through her fingers, nails catching on the spots of dried blood in it, the strands stuck together and tainted red. “This blood’s not mine.”

There isn’t a word said after that.

I don’t even know _what_ to say.

I could have chimed in, said that this blood’s not mine either. Could have asked, “then who does it belong to?”, because the blood of me has a name still attached to it. Could have said anything, really, even commented on the fucking weather- but something about the cold way she says it (like it doesn’t matter whose blood it is, because the person’s gone and _they no longer matter_ ) locks up my chest and leaves me unable to speak. What do you say to something like that anyway?

So I just sit there. Watch the cars and the buildings and the lights flash by while she turns down one street, turns down another. The only sounds in the car come from her phone, with its automated voice telling her which way to go, and her with the little bridges she hums every so often.

It’s not until the phone chimes up with something about “one-point-one miles to destination” that Hitch reaches over and flicks her finger against my cheek. It knocks me out of whatever empty state my head was in - _I don’t even remember what I was thinking about, or if I was thinking at all, everything’s just so empty_ \- and back to the present with a startled blink.

“Mm?” I mutter, flicking her finger away. She sticks her tongue out, but with a tip of her head any silliness is gone.

“Look,” she says with a sigh. “You’re not in any trouble are you? Because if you are, and there’s something I can do, and you’re not telling me -”

“Okay but, you?”

Hitch slams her hand down just above the horn. “Springer, I’m a grown-ass woman, if something’s wrong with me, I can usually handle myself.”

She says that like I can’t.

* * *

“You kind of can’t, actually.”

I look up again and there she is again, fingers steeped and gaze locked and that little silly smile on her face. When she notices I’ve stopped, she laughs, swatting at the air while she says, “Look at it this way, you wanna count the ways? Now that you’ve connected some lines for me already I’m sure I’ve got a good grip on your big mistakes -”

“Probably,” I tell her. “But it’s all those little mistakes that make the big ones hurt, y’know. And you don’t know them yet.”

Her smile’s so falsely sweet, I can feel my blood sugar spiking by looking at it. “Oh,” she murmurs. “You want me to shut up now.”

You’re the one who wanted me to talk. I wouldn’t have minded sitting here tripping in my own head for a while. At least before she showed up I wasn’t cringing every time Jean’s name popped up, because now what if that’s the last time I ever think about him while he’s alive, what if that’s the last time I can think about him and use present tense, what if, what if, what if.

“Yeah. Kinda.”

She heaves out a “fine” that sound more like a sigh, claps her hands together, and blinks those pretty bright eyes as she waits for me to turn back the clock to times so much simpler.

Well.

It’s a scaled thing. I’d take one dead body and a key over this bullshit any day.

“Okay but wait -” she says, and any and all ticking of mental clocks going backwards grinds to a halt again. _Again_. She stands up, bouncing a finger through the air like she’s counting something. Words, thoughts, seconds until my patience runs out ( _and that counter’s going down so goddamn fast -_ ). Whatever it might be. It finally processes though, clicks into place the moment she stops moving.

“So this Hitch you’re talking about -” she starts to say, but the baffled sputtering noise I make stops her.

“Are we - are we actually playing this game here?” I ask. Like she doesn’t know who Hitch is, or Ilse, or Boris, or _Ymir_. Why are we about to play this pretending game, like we’re the only two people here, when I just heard the screams of my best friend a floor above me and she keeps bringing up Jean’s name like the syllable keeps her alive?

If she wants to make me feel like I’m alone, she’s doing a shit job of it.

( _Except when it comes to Jean, because the way she smiles and the way she laughs and the way she looks at me like she pities me for my loss is too disturbingly real but I’m not about to tell her that._ )

Or maybe she wants to distance herself from her actions ahead of time, erase her ties to every person I mention - from ones she doesn’t even know to ones she does but wishes she didn’t - so later she can say you were never my friends, just my minions and to her, it’s true.

I don’t know. Don’t think I’m going to.

“Anyway.” There’s a bite to her tone now as she pivots on a heel away from me. She never did like being interrupted. “So. You’ve got you in the car. And Hitch. And while you’re sitting in the front seat shooting the breeze, you’ve also got a body in the back seat.”

“Yeah.”

“Of her best friend.”

“Yeah.”

She drags a hand down her face and stares at me. Emotionless. “And you didn’t stick it in the trunk because...?”

“Groceries. Are you even listening?”

The look she gives me is so full of incredulous disbelief I almost regret not having my phone with me.

Where the fuck is my phone anyway?

“Alright,” she mutters. She rubs her temples with her fingers with another sigh before tucking a flyaway strand of hair behind her ear. She straightens up. Clicks her heels together. Reapplies her mask.

Just like that, she’s a robot again.

“You two are in the car, talking, she’s telling you she can handle herself, got it.” Her hands fold themselves behind her back and to me, she nods once.

* * *

I nod twice while Hitch continues. “But if something happens to you, Jean will probably skin me alive, so. I’ve got to make sure my skin stays -” She stops to tap at her arm. “Right here.”

I blatantly ignore the fact that she used Jean’s name in any relation to me and retaliate with a reminder.

“And Marlo will skin all of us. Probably use us as wallpaper if we’re aware of a fly landing on you wrong.” A little giggle bursts out of her that turns into a full-out laugh, has her gripping the steering wheel with her head thrown back against the seat. She has to pinch her nose with her fingers to stop, and even then anything she says next is peppered with little pauses while she catches her breath.

“Okay. Okay, okay, okay. But. Jean. But Jean. He’ll be so mad if his little Connie-boy gets himself hurt.”

“Okay, first of all -” I start, because I can feel, literally feel the heat flaring up along my neck and into my face. I’m blushing like an idiot and she knows it - because the moment I try to get any kind of defense off she cheerfully slams on the brakes and declares that she’s home.

I swear she does this to me on purpose.

“Okay,” Hitch says, more to herself than to me. “Now. Are you sure you can drive out of here?” The memory of the past few minutes is all but gone until she says something, because I was about to say I could, and ask her why she doubted me.

“I’ll be fine. It was just a...” A fluke? A mistake? A brutal trip back to reality?

Hitch and Jean have both mastered the art of ripping open your soul and judging it with just their eyes. It’s what she does the moment my voice trails off, eyes narrowed and sharp as knives. But she concedes. Eventually. Lets her gaze drop back to the wheel, and then the lock on the door as she yanks it up.

“Whatev,” she finally sighs out. “Have fun.” She’s half out of the car before she remembers the doughnuts and leans over one last time to grab them. It’s just for a fleeting moment, but before her hair completely blocks her face, but she looks as tired as I feel. I want to stop her. Grab her arm and ask. But this is Hitch, and all she’d do is scoff at me and say _if anyone’s got a problem it’s you right now_ with a sneer and those weirdly darkened eyes.

At least before, she had more than one person to tell.

“Connie?” I snap out of it, look to my left, and see she hasn’t left yet. She’s standing outside the car, peering in with an arm pressed up on the frame. Her face is blank, lips crumpled up like she’s thinking of saying something serious. She tips her head a bit, weighing her words, before she finally straightens up and throws at me a warning: “Don’t get so wrapped up in thinking about sucking Jean’s dick you ram the car into a lamppost!”

“Oh what the _fuck_?” I scramble for the driver’s side door to get out and maybe _wring her fucking neck_ but she can run and does - slams the door and darts up the steps to her building cackling. Before I’ve even fully sat up again, she’s already got her front door open and is slipping inside it, calling out Marlo’s name from the foyer.

She should be fine. I think.

But now there’s just me, and the three looming problems.

The body in the car - _who has a name but if I stall on it some more I can at least pretend a little bit longer_.

The key to the storage unit - _and where do I begin with this mess, I don’t even know, do you know how many storage facilities there are here?_

And the costume - _which probably won’t even fit me, and even if it does I’m not a superhero._

I can deal with the key and the costume at a later time. Tomorrow, next week, eventually, never if I’d like. I can’t do that to her body. I need to get rid of -

Get... rid... of? It's not like I'm taking out trash here.

Fuck it. I’ll deal with the moral ramifications of this later. I need to at least move. If I move like I have a plan, I will eventually have a plan. It’s an old saying. Something Martin liked to tell me with a booming laugh and a hard clap to my shoulder.

I scramble back into the driver’s seat and try to undo Hitch’s weird-ass parking job, while I grab onto threads of ideas and shake off the ones that don’t work. When they’re coming out at rapid-fire and only half of them in understandable English (the rest are in odd fragments with no actual meaning - _go here, do this_ \- but then?) practically none of them are usable, and I feel my hands shaking while I yank the gear back to reverse one last time. I can’t just get rid of her like she’s disposable. People aren’t disposable. You don’t use them and throw them away.

It comes to me, finally, after Hitch’s building is just another long lost in the sea of them and my phone’s been ringing in my pocket for a while. It’s a short burst of an idea, only has one word attached but it’s enough. It’s a start.

The more I toss it around, the more it fits. The more it works.

The moment there’s a red light I wrestle my phone out of my pocket, blatantly ignore the fifteen messages I have (two from Marco, one from Hitch, and twelve from Jean - twelve?) and pull up the GPS app. Slides fingers across keys and grit my teeth until the option I want comes up.

St. Xavier’s. 2.3 miles until destination.

My foot hits the gas a little too hard.

It’s two-point-three miles of almost suburbia, quiet and undisturbed save for the occasional other car in another lane. It’s two-point-three miles of silence. My brain’s finally stopped. It doesn’t race with a million thoughts at once or just scream one at me repeatedly. I just move. Lighten up on the pedal, drop my foot down a little bit harder. Move my hand this way or that way. I think all the painful overdrive my mind went into while she died in my arms, and after, and realize maybe it’s overworked itself into nothing. Brains do that, people do that. I’m probably just tired. Numb. You could tell me to my face right now that I just watched someone die and I wouldn’t process it. This numbness isn’t like the one from before. That wasn’t me feeling numb about it, that was feeling like the world was collapsing. I can at least do things and be aware I’m doing things. I’m not driving in a fog. Yet.

Two-point-three miles isn’t that long of a drive, and the phone’s telling me I’ve got 0.1 miles until my destination. This is where I pull over, park the car in the grass. Take a deep breath in. Hold it. Trace the edge of the steering wheel. Fully process what I’m about to do.

_I’m about to drop off my friend’s cold, dead body in front of the ER_ , I think to myself as I step out of the car. _I’m about to wrap her in Jean’s mother’s quilt, probably stained now with her blood_. I walk around the car, take the long way. Stall a bit. Prevent the inevitable by just a little bit. _I’m about to walk over to the front door with her in tow. I’m going to set her down, right on the mat in front of the doors and leave._

It sounds simple enough, in theory, and up until the moment I pull open the car door on her side everything’s fine. My resolve only falters once the door’s open. But it’s still okay - I can just take a deep breath, count to ten, trace a square on the hood of the car. I’m fine.

I don’t break until I pull back the quilt. I don’t break until I see her face, and when I do, my chest constricts and my vision blurs and I can hear the little sobs building in the back of my throat as I whisper over and over that I’m sorry.

Whomever said the dead look like they’re sleeping are liars. They’re far too cold, far too still, far too pale, far too empty. I couldn’t look at her and say with any sort of straight face that she’s asleep - there’s just no life left in her. She’s a shell. She’s empty.

Her life literally ran through my fingers - I held her, while it ran through my fingers and pooled on the ground and while her eyes rolled back and her body finally stopped twitching and -

“Oh my God,” I gasp out, jamming my knuckle into my mouth to fight back the impulse to just double over and wail. “I’m so sorry Christa.”

Beautiful, graceful, sweet Christa Lenz. Christa Lenz with the stars in her eyes and the ever-present smile on her face, Christa Lenz with the heart made of literal gold, Christa Lenz the actual angel from above -

And she’s dead. She’s lying in the back seat of Jean’s car, hair splayed across the cushion, still. Dead.

God, she’s fucking -

I tip my head back and swallow all feelings of overwhelming loss and despair and anxiety swelling up. She needs to come first, before any kind of meltdown on my part - I can curl up at home and fall apart all I want on my own time but I need to do something with her. So I reach down. I brush her hair out of her eyes, wrap an arm around her torso and pull her, slowly, into my arms. I have to stop twice - once because halfway through I forgot to take the quilt with her, and once because the revelation I was holding a dead body slumped me against the car and rendered me immobile.

I manage it, somehow. Pull her up completely, quilt and all, make sure its tucked around her properly. I’ve got her in my arms bridal-style while I make to kick the door shut (and fail twice, almost falling on my ass the second time). Now I just have to - make it to the door.

It’s a slow walk. I stop to readjust her so she doesn’t fall, stop to wrap my head on straight. That drowning feeling is back, it’s like walking underwater with chains strapped to my feet because I don’t want to just leave her but there’s nothing I can do. She said it herself. “ _Go. Just go, I can’t be helped._ ” She said it around angry, choked sobs while her fingers dug into my shirt. And it’s horrible, that after all she’s done, this is the ending I have to give her. This is how she dies.

And then there’s the costume. The one that’s thrown under the seat, blood-stained and scratched, the one I had to slowly pry off her because god can you imagine the stir if that’s seen. Can you imagine the hell and chaos and panic that would cause, because this city’s found its first break in about five years and it took about two and a half years for the city to do it in.

The question is, now what? Christa’s dead. Her key, that costume, and whatever is inside that storage unit (if I ever find it) are mine now. She even said so in her dying breaths - take them and do something with them please - but what the hell do I do with it? I’m not a superhero, I’m not agile and fight-savvy, I can’t shoot fucking webs out of my hands. I’m not a superhero. And she wants me to carry on for her - me.

I don’t even completely know what she was trying to do! All I know is she was fighting crime. Something about gangs and something about drugs and something something something that I don’t understand and -

My footsteps stutter to a halt just out of range of the doors.

I can’t wish for her to come back now.

She asked me with the last bit of strength she had to somehow carry on for her and I need to do that for her.

So I do, or I at least start to. With a quick glance at the doors to make sure the nurse has her head down, I press one final kiss to her forehead- _it’s so weird, to do that and not hear her little happy giggles and feel her playful shoves_ \- and set her down right in front of the doors.

The movement triggers them to slide open, but by the time the nurse actually looks up, she’s out of my arms and I’m out of sight, whipping around the corner and pressing myself against the wall. I’ll wait a bit, until some commotion starts and I’ll jump the low hedge lining the sidewalk, take my time getting back to the car, drive home, drop the groceries off to Jean, crawl into bed and lie there. Lie there and think of everything. Of her quiet pleas and broken crying and blood dripping through my fingers and keys that could open anything but don’t -

\- And of Spiderman, who’s lying dead and cold five feet away from me, with motives and plans all unfinished that fall now right onto my shoulders.

I could trace squares for a million fucking years on every surface imaginable, but I know for a fact that I will never be okay enough for this.

* * *

I was right then, and I’m still right now.


End file.
